Most of the pastors and preachers of this world are unwittingly preparing their congregations for eventual failure and defeat! “Jesus is coming soon,” they cry. “The end is near,” they say. “We are living in the last days right now,” they claim. Most seem totally oblivious to the fact that preachers have been making that claim not for a few years, or decades, BUT FOR CENTURIES!
“Well, He’s closer to coming now than He was ten or twenty years ago,” they argue. And that is true. But it is true in the same sense you are closer to your destination an hour after beginning your journey than you were when you first started, but what if your destination is San Francisco and you have begun your journey from your home in New Jersey? Still, you have a long, long way to go.
How are Christian congregations being prepared for defeat, you ask? When the decades continue to slip by and Christianity finds Islam growing more widespread and violent, gaining more and more territory and adherents, with more and more Christians slaughtered and beheaded many Christians will throw in the towel and concede, “We have been wrong. Jesus is not coming back. If the end is near, then it is the end of Christianity.”
If you are advanced in age, you probably don’t have a lot to worry about regarding Islam. It is the next generation, and the next, and the next that will suffer unspeakable atrocities and horrors. Those inhabitants of earth at that time will find comfort, peace and safety only in proportion to their submission to Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives. Even then, many will suffer martyrdom, but at least will have the hand of God to comfort and sustain them in their trials.
The handwriting is written on the wall in fiery letters. I read it long ago. Nor am I alone. Many others see clearly what I see, but we are in the extreme minority. I am but one watchman on that wall.
If preachers would just quit parroting one another, holding to the party line, so to speak, and finally allow the scriptures to say what they so plainly say, more and more of them would have to concede this present generation is NOT the generation that will witness Christ’s return to planet earth.
Again and again I have categorically stated that there is not an infant alive on earth today that can possibly live long enough to witness Christ’s return in their own lifetime. Your Bible clearly states that at the time of the end, the time immediately preceding Christ’s return every nation on earth will be followers of a great false religion, and that religion will be Islam. Any remaining Christians at that time will be hated of ALL nations! They will be hated in America, England, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Scotland – ALL NATIONS! They will be beheaded! (See Matthew 24:7-11 and Revelation 20:4).
Folks, Satan’s deceptive powers are staggering. He horribly deceived the wisest man who ever lived – Solomon. Billy Graham and Charles Stanley are not immune to his deceptive influence, neither am I, or you. But we must allow the Word of God to say what it says and accept its message. When the Bible says, “The dead know nothing,” we must accept that as a fact. When God told Adam and Eve, “Dust you are and to dust you shall return,” we must believe Him. He created us and He says He created us of purely chemical stuff. We ARE physical beings. We are a soul, which in the original Hebrew means we are “living, breathing creatures.” We have a spirit, but no scripture says our spirits are immortal and consciously aware after we die, only that our spirits return to God when we die, the spirits of all born human, saved and unsaved.
What is the purpose of a resurrection if we never really and truly die but “go to be with Jesus” the instant we breathe our last? Why resurrect a fleshly, long decayed and disintegrated physical body if one survives death in a spirit body? Would a black person still be black? Would a white person still be white? Would a midget still stand but two feet tall?
This world’s inhabitants have been inundated with false concepts and religious beliefs, and, for the most part, they just will not let them go. “All these people can’t be wrong,” they argue. All what people? All these Muslims? All these atheists? All these Roman Catholics or Mormons or Baptists?
Make no mistake. Jesus Christ IS coming back someday, but the day of His return is not as near as many have been led to believe. Nearly two thousand years ago the apostle Paul was confronted with this issue. Believers in Thessalonica had misconstrued something Paul had said in the first letter he had written to them and, therefore thought Jesus Christ could return at any moment. Paul then wrote them a second letter, saying, “Now we beseech you, brethren, by (or, concerning) the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him (at THAT time – not at the moment of our death)….Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except 1) there come a falling away first (Christians abandoning Christianity in great numbers), and 2) that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts Himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he as God sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he IS God. Remember you not that when I was with you I told you these things? And now you know what withholds (Jesus’ return) that He might be revealed in His time” (See 2 Thessalonians 2:1, 3-6).
Notice that Paul plainly tells the Thessalonian believers that two distinct and easily recognizable events MUST occur before Jesus Christ’s return: 1) There must be a great falling away from Christianity, and 2) one who exalts himself above God must sit in the temple of God thereby showing that he himself is God! Folks, that temple hasn’t even been built yet! So, calm down, Jesus won’t be “breaking through the blue” before you finish reading this article. So go ahead and buy that house or car on time. You will have time enough to enjoy and pay for it before our Lord’s return.
Christ’s servant (Galatians 1:10-12),
Donald Wiley